Fossils

I am returning again
to my home.
For a day I will smell lily pads,
and the dank odor of algae.
I do not know what to say
to streets changing
like an aging face.
Where have you been?
Where did you go?

While I stare at stones
filling a railroad right-of-way,
running along the play park
of childhood.
Should I gather a few?
Fill my pockets?
Perhaps after so many years
all the stones I stepped on
are gone.
But a few may remain.

The world doesn’t change itself
like our bodies.
My cells are new
and I end in a different way
than the world,
its passing of seasons.
I will die.
A privilege unique to life.

So if the town calls to me,
if mornings and nights
crowd my senses for attention,
pieces of the past
dropping through me
like a gale of leaves,
I will tell Sandusky,
here I am,
for a few hours.
I remember my life,
sad and happy.
A place where time
puts fossils for me to find.